Siderism
by Shadesaurus
Summary: The belief that stars influence behavior and pull the strings of fate. / A collection of one-shots written for TacoClan's 12 Days of Christmas Challenge.
1. Gone

When she opened her eyes, Mackerel was in paradise.

Rays of sunshine sliced through the leafy trees, dappling the dusty brown ground with golden petals of light. Around her, the forest breathed, with trees swaying back and forth to the song of their leaves shaken by the breeze. The searing heat scorched her from the outside in, warming her to her very core. This was a place that had never known the crippling strength of cold moons and snow and the rattling of shallow breaths clawed out of collapsing lungs, nor would it ever know the spattering of fresh scarlet blood on snow, or the roil of frozen winds over a white plain of nothing.

How ironic that hell was masked in such a beautiful guise.

"Vetis?" she called tentatively, her eyes searching hungrily for his dark coat and hot-coal eyes.

(they're all she's never missed about her times as a servant, those red orbs whose fire it seems was snatched from the sun)

But he didn't emerge, didn't offer her that twisted smirk that she knew held no real malice, didn't apologize for fucking thrusting her out of the world that she had embraced even given the circumstances of her imprisonment. She hated herself for ever liking him as she sat there in the sunshine.

_Because he never cared about you, no_. _____  
_

(it was all a dream in the end, that visit to heaven, but it still burns in the back of her throat when she thinks about it)_  
_

* * *

She was a pretty little thing, only a few moons younger than herself, with black fur darker than the night sky and twin green stars for eyes. It was easy to see why Maelstrom fell for her like a suicide from a bridge. He took the fall and he splintered.

Every day now, she can see the love and the hate and the sadness that made a home in his mind. She wants to hate the Clanner for breaking him, wants to hate the stars and cruel fate and herself for not helping him before it was too late.

But he's gone now, and they're all going too.

* * *

He's kind of like her rock, that hulking mountain of a cat. He's everything she wants and everything she needs, somebody to build back up so that she can say _this is what I've done with my life and I'm proud_ but it's not going to happen, no, because he's just as broken as she is.

She can't help anybody without helping herself first, but Mackerel won't face that because she knows what it means and she just can't take another disappointment.

She knows that there's no fixing the damage done to her. She was destined for this fate before she was born, star-damned. She doesn't even know _why_, and that will always be the worst part. Some things will haunt her no matter how deeply she buries them.

And that makes her more alike to Shackle than she'll ever know.

* * *

She'll always have courage. Not the courage that roars and guides the way, but the quieter kind, the kind that says _I will try again tomorrow. _

So it's no surprise that she takes blow after blow until the day she dies, bleeding out a worthy death back in the hay loft by the limp body of the tortoiseshell who lost her way, too. She's come full circle now, and still as empty of answers as ever. The feeling leaves her as quickly as the blood does.

She dies with Shackle and Maelstrom and Twister around her. They're telling her she's going to be alright, and she knows that, yes, she knows things are okay now.

The last threat is gone. There are no assassins, no cutthroats, no tyranny ruling this forest. The kingdom has crumbled and only one servant remains.

It's the one she loves.


	2. Thieves

As he flit over the open plains, tortoiseshell bundle in mouth, the ginger tom took care to step precisely in the tracks he had created before. His breathing was ragged, a quick succession of _ha-ha-ha_ pants warming the kit in his jaws. Her feeble struggling had long since ceased as the chill night air pressed against her, rich and cool with the smells of thaw and a reawakening earth. She, the now nameless kit, did not know to welcome the coming months of spring and summer - she only knew that this wasn't the same milky den that had only briefly been her home, and that her mother's familiar scent was fading fast, carried away from her with each rustle of the wind.

Now she simply sniffled, letting out a quiet whimper whenever Foxtrot stumbled on the slush that seemed to melt before his paws.

She was cold, and while the feeling was not a new experience for her, the nameless kit didn't like it anymore than she had a moon ago. The white hills yawned before her, and with the predawn glow of the sun peaking on the horizon, she could tell that it was nothing more than an empty expanse with trees encroaching from all sides.

_Hills_, she thought, placing a word to the unknown. It didn't lessen her fear, but the realization did offer her a small amount of reassurance, made her feel a little less alone and confused. The identity of her captor did not come as easily, though. She didn't recognize this stranger's scent - he did not carry the smell of her mother or any of the other huge cats she had encountered - and although he was red, red between the grisly scars that seemed to cover every inch of him, he was not the same deep russet of her mother's friend.

Another burst of fear shot through her, and the little kit nearly let out another plaintive cry before she was jostled when the tom slid on the ice, all four legs splaying out as he fought to keep control. Her dangling hind paws brushed the watery snow, and she pulled back, whimpering in complaint.

"Shut up." A rush of hot breath met her scruff, and she fell silent at once, ears flattening at his harsh words. She didn't understand what they meant, but she recognized their sharpness and the warning implied in his tone.

Much to her relief, the ginger tom managed to steady himself, a growl humming in his throat as he plunged on. The journey seemed to drag on, but before they reached their destination - wherever it was - her captor plopped down on the ground with a groan, dipping his head and dropping her in a heap on the slush. The freezing cold jolted through her painfully, but she knew better than to cry out again, fearing that his retribution would be more than just a snarl this time around.

"Gods dammit," the tom snarled, baring his fangs in a grimace. She shrank back, trying to appear as small and meek as possible as he sucked in a violent breath. It hissed between his clenched teeth, and she felt the tiniest twinge of satisfaction at the look of pain pronounced plainly on his mutilated face. This tom truly was horrifically scarred, with more scars cutting into his skin than she could count. She may not have known many cats, but all of them had had two eyes, and he, this horrible cat, only had one, gleaming, coppery eye. An eye bright with pain.

She stared up at him, blanched beneath her thin fur, drinking in every detail from the scar curving up from the corner of his jaw to the shredded remains of one ear. How could one cat bear so many scars? What had he done to deserve such a punishment? She had dim memories of a kit taking a swipe at another, but it had never been enough to draw blood, never possessed enough strength to do _this_.

She swallowed, finally managing to tear her eyes away from his exhausted panting. _He is a monster_.

"You need a name," he said, and she felt his eye suddenly upon her, willing her to look his way again. Reluctantly, she finally glanced back at him, mewling quietly in response. The sound conveyed no words, but the ginger tom seemed to interpret it as an acknowledgement of sorts. He nodded after a moment and raised his head to the star speckled sky, smirking with an arrogance she would come to be familiar with for the rest of her short life.

"Something fierce would be nice," he mused, amber gaze still fixed on the evening blue sky. "Something... unusual. Exotic. Unheard of."

The little kit frowned, puzzled by his mumblings. Hadn't he been in pain only moments before? Why was he suddenly acting fine? Why did he seem... happy? The feeling was twisted with darkness, impure, but it was a kind of cruel contentment nonetheless. It didn't make any sense, none at all, and her head was beginning to ache with a combination of confusion and fatigue.

"Oh, I know," the ginger tom said after a moment, and his crooked grin lengthened disturbingly as the smile tugged at his scar. "Astral, after those bastards in the sky your mother and the rest of you blindly worship. How fitting." He chuckled, and although it was full of mirth, a chill still ran down her spine.

_I want Momma. I want Red and Bite and Quiet, and I want our nest and I want warmth. _They didn't appear, though - she had not expected them to. Nothing came without her quiet whimpering, she knew from experience, but making a noise now would only provoke the tom's wrath.

The tom rose to his paws finally, and she watched as the string of muscle in his hind leg quivered with effort. Why was he so weak? Was it his scars, or was it something else? Did it hurt to do bad things? She had never considered that possibility before, but it seemed sensible enough now that she thought about it. The bad needed to be punished - that was the only law she had ever known.

"Let's go, Astral," the ginger tom grunted, and seized her by the scruff of her neck before she had had a moment to prepare herself. She couldn't help the whimper that escaped her then, and immediately she cringed with fear, realizing her mistake a second too late.

Mercifully, and much to her surprise, no rebuke came, and after several tense moments she relaxed. Whatever the future held for her, she was safe for the moment, and she wanted so desperately to believe that Momma would come to rescue her soon. She would snatch her up and bathe her with frantic licks, drying her slush dampened fur until she was fuzzy and warm. Then, Momma would lay her by the crook of her belly and scold her in that soft, loving voice that she knew meant that Momma didn't really mean a word she said. And all would be well, and warm, and she would drink her fill and sleep, sleep, sleep...

Bite wouldn't even take a snap at her, not with Momma so worked up, and Red and Quiet would be as gentle as ever.

She hardly registered the ginger tom's struggles as he toiled along the slushy trail, wrapped up in her fantasy that would never be completed. It wasn't long before she succumbed to a sleepy state, an undefined line blurring between dream and reality.

His pants were her lullaby, and the labored song was the last thing she heard before she coasted off to sleep and awoke into a new world,

a world where Death danced under the name Astral, and the hate made a nest in her tired mind.


	3. Wanderjahr

**i.**

He wakes in a bottomless forest, one as silent as his bated breath.

Jenner has never been so baffled in all of his life—this is impossible, this world as dark as an undersea bottom. He refuses the twinkling stars wrought in his fur, rejects their beauty as they glow dimly all around him like drops of pale, fleeting sunshine. _There's no such thing as heaven_, he thinks furiously as he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to will it all away. Because his father is _not_ right—there is no afterlife. You live, laugh, love, leave, and then you're dead. You die when your body does. That's just it. There's nothing on the other side, no punishment or praise, no redemption or rest.

At least, not for him. Not for Jenner, the nothing son born to a father of less than even that. For Jaci, maybe, with her pretty coat and bright eyes and stars like flowers in her fur, but not him. He was only scruff on the backs on city bosses, low and street-born, nothing special, just another tom playing cool with his rascal grin.

He's Jenner, the cat with a name that five others on his block shared. He was born in a matching set, with three brothers that looked exactly alike him and two mordacious sisters who sold themselves to the night so that sick Cooley might get a scrap to eat. He was born nothing and died nothing, did nothing worthy of joining the ranks of those fabled dead in the sky. He failed Jaci, fathered four kits when he was hardly out of kit-hood himself, and stopped fighting for breath when he could've made it out alive if he had the will to survive for them.

But they're orphaned, now, those babies, he knows that. It makes his whole body ache with regret.

Jenner knows that he isn't deserving of this higher place where the wise come to sleep and the innocent to play, so when he opens his eyes again a short time later and the stars blink lazily back at him, he's seized by a wrath he never knew he had in him.

Jenner throws venom at the starry sky, spits out curses like sparks from a match, his mouth all curled in a snarl as the hate hums in his veins like poison. He feels like his head is going to explode, like this red rage will devour him in hot flames and burn this black plain to the ground.

He wouldn't mind it if the world ended in fire.

**ii.**

There is no time here, so when the anger finally ebbs, Jenner doesn't know what to do. He needs the sun, a clock, something to direct him, needs it like a martyr needs a cause.

His mouth tastes like ash, bitter with the fumes of his dying anger. He's all burnt out like the trailing tail of a comet left behind, and more than anything he wants to sleep the long slumber of a permanent planet. It would be nice, he thinks, to drift away from all the demons that chase him. He wants to believe that everything will go away eventually. Running has always been the answer to his question.

So Jenner does escape. He curls up in a ring of dust and thinks it ash, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. The air tastes different here, stagnant and without flavor. _Fitting_, Jenner thinks, and he bears the smallest of smirks as he tucks his nose into his forepaws. Dead air for a dead world.

He lays there for ten thousand beats of the heart and meticulously counts each and every thrum, though eventually he loses track. Sleep still doesn't come for him, but frustration does. Finally he stands and looks around at the colorless forest, hair prickling in the beginnings of a bristle. He swallows, then takes that first step into the undergrowth, the first of hundreds of thousands more. It tangles and twists like brambles, and he pricks his paws on something sharp he can't see more than once, but as he travels on and on, he discovers that the pain breaks up the monotony of the reluctant journey he endeavors on. He doesn't mind it so much then.

Jenner treks on for another ten thousand heartbeats before things start to change. He doesn't notice it at first, but when he does it bewilders him. The further he travels, the brighter the small spatters of light around him glow. They're showing up in places they didn't before as well—ten thousand heartbeats ago, they only sprinkled the clearing in which he woke, with a few faintly dusting the trees like melting dew.

His heartbeat quickens and Jenner hastens forward, hopeful thoughts coming unbidden from his mind.

**iii.**

Another fifty thousand heartbeats have passed, and Jenner faces a spectacle that leaves him breathless. The rosy crown of dawn kisses the horizon's mouth, streaking the black sky with plumes of color like berries smeared across snow. He's seen countless sunrises before, but this phenomenon is something otherworldly, and aurora of soft blues and pinks and purples unfurled like a phoenix's wings against the blacks of night.

_There's no way this is real_, he thinks in awe, eyes wide and hungry, mouth parted as he gazes longingly ahead. He has spent so long in the dark, so the zest of the colors burn his eyes and make his head ache, but Jenner wouldn't have turned his eyes away for the whole world.

He stands there for a while and drinks in the sight of it for a measure of time he does not care to count, then plunges on with new vigor into the next leagues of the labyrinthine forest.

**iv.**

The stars shine even brighter as the shadows lengthen and fester like sores in the presence of a blue dawn. He can feel it getting closer; or rather, he can feel himself drawing nearer.

What exactly it is, Jenner doesn't know, but it's like gravity compelling him onward towards the roots of the colors that bled across the sky. It's merciless, leaving him no choice but to tirelessly place one paw in front of the other again and again and again.

He _wants_ to obey, though. There's something waiting there, he just _knows_, and there's nothing that will keep him from finding it. He's never been so sure of anything in his entire existence.

Slowly but surely, he twists and weaves his way through the blacks and grays of the forest which light up all around him as if on command,

but it's another ten thousand heartbeats before everything around him begins to blaze a dazzling white.

**v.**

When he finally catches sight of her, Jenner goes stiff with shock. She's just like he remembers, but, impossibly, even prettier.

She smells sweet like honeysuckles and radiates light, truly _radiates_ like a lantern of dancing, twirling, whirling color all spun together like yarn, and his heart nearly splinters in two. In life she was lovely, but in death, Jaci is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Her back is turned to him, small maw tilted up slightly towards the cosmos so that he can't see her eyes, but Jenner knows that the clarity of those greens he loves so much will be sharp as wolf teeth.

_Heaven did her justice_, he thinks.

"_Jace_." His voice is only a whisper husky with emotion, but he tries again, and louder. "Jaci."

She freezes, and for a moment the auriferous light that illuminates the land is paralyzed in her surprise and ceases its shimmering. Then, slowly, as if disbelieving her own ears, she turns to face him.

His breathing hitches as Jaci beams a smile warm as the summer sun. "I knew you would come."

**vi.**

He takes one of his last steps forward, feels his paws where hers once stood, kit soft and small against his own tough ones, and smiles his lopsided smile.

As the stars all fall down around them, Jenner pads forward to greet her.


	4. Rogalian

ROGALIAN - _[adjective] - _of or pertaining to a great fire.

* * *

The day he meets her is sultry and warm, so humid it reminds him of the water at the bottom of the horse's trough out in the sunny fields.

"Oh, Lilah, she's just _gorgeous_," Eirem coos in a voice like honey. He's never seen his mama's eyes so big and bright, drinking in the sight of the pretty silver she-kit tucked up against Lilah's swollen belly. There are two brothers beside her, one a smoky black just like him, the other a radiant golden. "What will you name her?"

Lilah beams at his mama, draws one paw leisurely over her ear, and says, "I was thinking Piper, after my mother."

"Perfect," Eirem says in that breathy, reverent voice she only reserves for Lilah. Rec feels a twinge of envy at how fondly his mama looks at the kits that aren't even hers; he wants her to look at him that way, too. "And the other two?"

"Thompson and Byron, after my papa and uncle."

He can tell Eirem only purrs because she has to; really, all her eyes are for is Piper, as are his. Rec's never seen a little kitten so beautiful, with tiny tabby stripes down her flanks like bleeding shadows. He wonders what her eyes will look like when they open and the blue fades.

_Maybe green just like Miss Lilah's_, he thinks, then says that aloud with a bashful grin. Lilah purrs in amusement and leans forward to muss his ears with her paw, and Rec's face burns as he doesn't duck away like he does with his own mama, because it's the polite thing to do and mama always makes a fuss over being respectful.

He glances at her almost nervously as soon as Miss Lilah's withdrawn, and positively shines with pride at the way her green eyes twinkle at him approvingly.

He'd do anything for her to look at him like that every day.

* * *

"You _like_ her," Cub taunts, always a hairbreadth away from each swinging blow Rec aims.

"Do not," he hisses back, face hot with embarrassment.

"Do too, do too, do too!" Cub sticks out his tongue, then turns and runs as Rec lunges again, claws outstretched and eyes narrowed with frustration.

The two brothers play the game of chase all the way into the fields of tall golden grass, and in the end Rec has Cub pinned down, both of them panting like worn dogs from the toil.

"I do _not_ like Piper!" he fumes with a growl low in his throat, tail lashing.

"Fine," Cub concedes, though his eyes beg to differ, and Rec reluctantly lets go of his grip. It's hard not to scratch the smug look right off his face as he turns around and starts to stalk back towards the barn, only to stall in surprise as he comes face to face with his papa—or, rather, his papa's chest. Rec looks all the way up his steep, scarred shoulders, up his neck and face to meet his father's amber, stormy eyes.

"What are you two doing out here? Didn't your mother tell you to stay inside?" Seph asks in that gruff, disapproving way of his, and both Cub and Rec's ears flatten with unease.

"We were just playing tag!" his black brother says from behind him. Rec doesn't have to look to know that Cub has that soft, timid smile on his face, a meekness he only sees when papa's around.

"It's not safe here," Seph grunts, eyes flicking warily from side to side like he thinks there are hungry animals skulking in the shade. "We're going back home, and your mother is going to hear about this."

"Yes, sir," the two brothers guiltily mumble in unison, staring at their paws as they follow Seph's looming figure back into the barn.

Eirem is waiting for them in the hay with Nook at her belly, still suckling even despite the fact that he's five moons old now. Rec feels embarrassed even though there's no one but family around them; he and Cub are weaned by now, but Nook refuses the mice mama catches and the squirrels papa snags.

As soon as mama sees Seph heading their group she shrinks almost imperceptibly, and Rec knows that when she speaks, she'll sound quiet and feeble like his stupid baby brother.

"Hello, dear," she says.

"I caught these two sneaking around outside," Seph growls like she never even spoke, and Rec burns with shame. Nothing ever pleases papa, nothing at all. Not bravery or being funny or catching dinner. Sometimes he thinks that papa doesn't feel anything but anger.

"Oh." Mama is small when she's afraid. "They must've gone outside while I was napping."

"Napping," Seph repeats, squints, and then says slowly, "Cub, Rec, why don't you two take Nook down to where the horses are held. He hasn't been in a while."

_He was down there yesterday, remember?_

Rec shuts his mouth and does as he's told, leading tiny Nook down the shaky stairs, but still he can hear Eirem's soft pleading, the _please honey, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry_'s she always says in a broken rhythm.

"Should we do something?" he asks Cub in a whisper once Nook's been left in a corner.

"No," Cub growls, hiding his eyes. "Mama deserves it. She was bad."

Rec knows that his brother doesn't mean it. The pain in his voice speaks for him.

* * *

"You're awful pretty." He knows he looks stupid, especially with that blush scorching him under his fur, but Rec means every word.

Piper looks away, but he still catches her smile. "And you're too handsome for your own good, Rec. Some she-cat just might up and fall in love with you, and then what would you do?"

"I wouldn't object… as long as she's you." He can't believe his own nerve.

Piper flushes. "Mama told me I'm too young to fall in love."

"You're eight moons," Rec argues with a furious shake of his head. "You can do whatever you want, and no grownup can tell you otherwise." His voice softens then. "Besides, I can take care of you! We can run away from our fathers. They got in too deep with Ropes, but that's their fault, not ours. We can't do nothing to fix it, so we need to go _now_ before something bad happens."

"I want to, Rec, I really do," she replies sadly, "But I can't. I can't leave my brothers and my mama and papa. I love them."

"Don't you love _me_?"

"I do, I really do, but I _can't_. I just need more time, I—I'm not ready."

Rec wants to yell at her, but he won't be the kind of cat is father is. "Okay," he says unwillingly, then leans forward and touches his nose to her ear. "But I am, and I'll wait as long as I need to so I can be with you."

He leads her back home to her papa, who nods and bids him goodnight.

* * *

"Go on, you three," Eirem urges them, nudging them along with a smile that's too sad to be encouraging. "Go outside and play. Your papa says it's safe now; he won't yell."

"You sure?" Rec doesn't want to doubt her, but trusting her is impossible when she'd take a beating if it meant they got some sunshine.

She nods, and they go. He'd be lying if he said he didn't want to go outside for once.

The grasses are shorter than he remembers, but he's grown big and brawny just like papa with a dark coat to match Cub's. The two brothers jostle each other on the way out with Nook moseying after them.

"Think we should give 'im the slip?" Cub suggests as soon as Eirem's out of sight, casting their silver brother a scornful look over his shoulder.

"Nah," Rec says. "Mom'll have our tails if he so much as ends up tripping and bruising his precious little nose."

Cub snorts, but doesn't prod him any further. "'Kay, but let's go find Tommy and Ron. Maybe we can rustle up somethin' to eat."

"Yeah. S' been a few days since we last saw 'em." His thoughts drift to Piper.

"Din't their ma ground 'em for roughing up Sally's kid?"

"Yeah."

"Heard the bitch was asking for it."

"Prob'ly."

Cub gives him an odd look. "What's up with you?"

"Nothin', just din't sleep well last night, is all."

"You're a piss poor liar."

"I'm not lying." Rec sets his jaw stubbornly.

"Liar."

"Shut up. You dunno what you're talking about."

"Are you thinkin' 'bout Piper?"

"Nah," he says, a little too fast.

"Did you ask her _again_?"

Rec scowls. "No."

"I'm really sorry. I'm sure she'll come around eventually."

"It's whatever. Are we gonna get Tommy n' Ron or what?"

"Yeah, let's—" Cub breaks off with a start as a scream rises up just behind them, almost inhuman in its shock and fear.

Rec spins around quickly, pushing back the jolt of fear that runs through him as he sees the biggest hawk he'd ever seen in all his life, and lunges for his brother who's so tiny and so sickly he could easily pass for a kit, a quick meal.

But it's too late.

The hawk's talons are sunk inches deep in Nook's scruff and it's flying higher and higher, and Rec's own claws just miss his brother's churning legs as he springs for him. The hawk rises up and up and up, their yells and mama's screeches at its cruel black wings, pleas for Nook to claw and kick and fight with everything he has in him. In their panic, they forget that he can't hear.

They never find the body, and Rec thinks that it's for the best. He doesn't want to see Nook's last expression of fear frozen on his face.

* * *

His father's rage is monumental, a sight so blood-chilling and gut-wrenching that he's frozen where he stands. Cub is stalk still beside him, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide as his father tears into mama like a fiend come straight from the pits of hell.

"_You let him die!_" Seph screams over and over as he paints her flanks and face red as roses. Eirem's sobbing, collapsed on the floor as he rips her open, pleading incoherently beneath his bulk.

_You didn't give a shit about him yesterday, you shoved him over just 'cause he was in the way._

Rec's never watched him do this before, but he knows that it's worse than normal. She only has gashes on the worst of days, and even then there's no hollering, just cursing and snarling.

_This isn't how it's supposed to go_, he thinks, but he can't move, just sits in a stupor of silent, creeping horror.

It feels like Seph pulls her apart muscle from bone before he stops, but the second he's finished and his back is turned, Eirem lurches to her paws with a crazy light in her eyes. Rec closes his eyes because she's going to die, except she doesn't, she throws Seph to the ground and makes the blood burn in his veins.

The whole world is drowning in crimson, choking with screeches and profanity and other things he doesn't understand, things that happened before his birth.

Eirem never looked as tall as she did when she ripped out his throat.

* * *

"I heard about your father, Rec, and I'm so, so sorry," Piper whispers into the night, pressing her reedy body against his.

"It's okay," he says huskily, throat just about closed up with sorrow. Beneath the stars in the field of gold, it's easy for him to pretend they're the only two left in the world. "Ropes was bound to come for us eventually."

She doesn't say anything more. Her love does all the talking he needs.

* * *

"I have an announcement to make."

Eirem's twin sons look up from their breakfast, Cub still chewing from his last bite as Rec swallows his. The spot where Nook once ate is still painfully empty.

"Yes, mama?" Rec asks.

Her voice is brittle. "I visited Lilah yesterday, and she said that my suspicions are true: I'm pregnant."

The floor drops out from underneath them. "No you're not," says Cub, the first to speak.

"I'm sorry, baby. I'm so, so sorry," Mama whispers.

Rec feels like he's going to throw up.

* * *

Rec comes home one day to the smell of blood and milk rich in the air. They'd been a long time coming, but it still sends a chill through him. He pads quietly to the hay loft, stomach all in knots, and the first thing he sees is Piper at the crook of his mother's belly.

Except it's not Piper, it's a silver kit who looks just like she did. The burst of warmth he feels comes like the sun rising strong again after all winter long, dazzling in its radiance.

And then he sees his mama's expression.

"Look at it," she says quietly, green eyes sharp and cold like the hawk's were. "Look what he did to me. He lives inside of her; none of the others bear his likes." Rec doesn't so much as spare the other three kits a passing glance.

"Mama." His voice is low, ears pinned to his skull. "Seph is _gone_, and he isn't coming back."

"_No he's not_."

Rec takes a step back as if she's a viper, taken aback by the hate coursing poisonously in her voice. "Mama—"

"Don't you say anything to me about this anymore," Eirem spits as her hair raises and an almost deranged gleam flickers in her eyes. "This kit isn't mine, she's Seph's, and unless I do something, she'll grow into the monster her father was. She'll rip out all of our throats, force us into the shadows. _Do you hear me_?"

There is a short, defeated silence, then: "Yes, ma'am."

Mama always did make a fuss over manners.

* * *

Rec wears an expressionless mask as Loth tears out two of his little sister's whiskers, keeps the angry heat at bay as it swells inside of him. She runs bawling back into the shadows with the blood running angry down her cheek.

"Good job." Rec's voice holds no praise, but in his haste to impress Eirem, Loth doesn't notice.

"Did'ja see that, mama?" he demands, whirling to face the queen.

"I did, Loth. You did wonderfully," she purrs, and Loth grins broadly when his actions coax an angelic smile from her. There is no trace of her scars now.

Rec takes to his paws and leaves, belly roiling at the thought of stomaching another round of the sick praise and preaching that would soon follow it up. He makes it into the trees on the other side of the field before he empties his stomach, head as light as his paws.

_I should've put her out of her misery long ago. It'd be better than this half of a life she lives._

Piper finds him there a few hours later, collapsed and shivering as he stared lifelessly at the pool of his own bile.

* * *

"C'mon, Rec," Tommy grins, flexing his claws. "I'll give 'er a good time, you know I will."

Rec stares at him in disgust. "What the fuck is wrong with you? She's a _baby_."

"Don't tell me you're goin' soft," Byron snorts.

"Yeah, c'mon bro, it's not a big deal. No one cares about her anyway," Cub mutters.

"_No_, it's wrong, and—"

"I'll be at the barn tomorrow to pick 'er up, 'ight Cub?" Tommy raises his voice to interrupt, casting Rec an irritated look.

"Got it," he hears his brother say distantly, before turning and leaving.

Tommy keeps his word, and it's wretched.

Rec spends all night trying to block out her sobs.

* * *

"What the _fuck_ was that?"

"I, I don't—"

"Your brother just about tore off her face, for Banks' sake! What the hell is _wrong_ with you? You didn't do _anything_ to stop it!"

"You don't understand, Piper, she's—"

"Your family treats her like _shit_, and don't you tell me otherwise, 'cause I've seen it," Piper hisses, and Rec's ears flatten. "_Why don't you do anything about it_?"

"Piper, you don't understand, they wouldn't—"

"If you tell me I don't understand _one more time_, I'm going to—to _flay_ you!"

"_Please_, Piper, just listen to me," he pleads desperately, but then she smiles at him in a way that scares him more than Seph's claws ever did, and the words die in his mouth.

"Forget it, you asshole. You're not the cat I thought you were."

He watches her storm off and retches. It's hard to keep down the bile these days.

* * *

He wakes up to a world of fire and the stench of burning flesh, and by the time he drags himself out of the barn, it's at the point of crashing to the ground.

Rec doesn't see Mackerel as she slips away, only hears Loth in hysterics as he prods Shaw's lifeless body. No one notices that Cub isn't there, that he's probably stuck somewhere in that barn with ashes setting his lungs ablaze and the fire licking hot trails across his skin.

He finds that he doesn't care anymore. Eirem is not mama so much as ma'am anymore, and Cub has become a stranger after having found brothers in Tommy and Byron.

The only ones he cares for now, Piper and Mackerel, are gone, as he deserves; he's failed both of them.

* * *

His kits are born in the fall, and Piper only allows him to visit every so often. She doesn't trust him around babies, not after what she found out he had let happen right under his nose. Rec doesn't blame her.

They're all silver like his lost sister, just as much estranged from him as she was, and all three lovelier than he ever could've thought possible. Piper names them Benjamin, Lucas, and Tabitha.

Loth dies a few days later. The fire never really left his lungs.

* * *

"Papa?" Tabitha asks during one of his visits. She's four moons old now, and a spitting image of Mackerel.

"Yes?" he replies, glancing down in amusement as she nibbles on his ankle with her little teeth.

"Where did uncle Tommy go? Mama says he had to go, but she won't say where."

"I don't know where he went, Tabby. I'm sorry." He flicks his tail at her appealingly, and smiles thinly as she pounces on it at once, so easily enraptured by things older cats found silly. It reminds him of the way he broke Thompson's back.

When he returns back to the rubble of the barn later that evening, he finds Eirem burying Spell. She had always said there was something sick living inside of her frailest kit, and it had finally caught up with her.

Spell looks smaller in death than she did as a newborn. He likes to think the fire took away what little life she had.

* * *

Rec is growing sick when he can feel her. There's something that he can't quite pin down, but it's there, she's coming, and he can feel it in his bones. In his mind, she looks a lot like Piper, a pale lioness who grew strong. He hopes that she found friends, a real family that would love her like they couldn't have.

When she comes back, and she _will_ come back, Rec knows that she will not be the same cat she once was.

He only wonders if he'll still be alive to meet her.


End file.
